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A special hourlong episode of WGLT's newsmagazine Sound Ideas. These stories originally aired Sept. 10, 2021, near the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

'I Felt Like I Was Teaching Underwater': Memories of Being In The Classroom On 9/11

Sue Stroyan and Laurel Schumacher
Courtesy
Sue Stroyan and Laurel Schumacher around 2001. They were teaching across the hall from each other on Sept. 11, 2001.

At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, millions of children across the United States were just starting their school day. Word that a plane had struck the north tower in lower Manhattan began to travel, albeit at a glacial pace by today's standards. There were no smart phones lighting up with news alerts. No social media to disseminate or analyze the news. Only radios and television sets, one of which happened to be on in a classroom at University High School in Normal.

First-year teacher Cory Culbertson paused to watch with a group of students. He was sure what they were witnessing was a horrific accident. But then another plane hit.

“I just remember the sinking gut feeling when we watched live the second plane crash into the second tower and realized that not only that it was more tragedy, but it was intentional.”

Down the street at Metcalf School, Laurel Schumacher was preparing for the arrival of her 1st grade students when a “darling and energetic little girl” came running down the hall, announcing to everyone that the towers had been hit.

"I really regret having as much of that be live for our students as it was."
Cory Culbertson, teacher

Sue Stroyan taught second grade across the hall from Schumacher. Hearing the girl's cries, she walked into the hallway to see what was going on.

“It was like the newsboy,” Stroyan remembers. “Extra, Extra – hear all about it.” The girl had just been dropped off by her grandmother, Stroyan recalls, and they’d heard reports on the radio that planes had intentionally been flown into the towers.

“She just kept saying, We’re at war, we’re at war,” Stroyan said.

Stroyan and Schumacher didn't know what to make of what they were hearing. It was unimaginable news delivered by a student known for her creative personality. Their predicament illustrates the position that so many educators found themselves in that day: Teachers, alarmed and confused, standing before their frightened students, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Culbertson remembers thinking just how unprepared he was for the task. He asked himself how he was going to lead his students. He wondered how he was going to be able to help them make sense of what they were seeing when he couldn’t make sense of it himself.

“I just felt really inadequate that day,” he said.

Culbertson said nothing, in the 20 years since, has been as difficult as his experience of watching with his students as the towers burned on live television.

“Processing that in real time with students still sticks with me as one of the most anguishing days of my teaching career,” he said.

At Metcalf, Schumacher and Stroyan had made the decision to shield their young students from what was happening.

“We went on like it was a normal day,” Schumacher says. “But I felt like I was teaching underwater.”

Schumacher had her own school-age children at time. And in the days before smart phones, when now practically everyone is just a instant message away, there was no easy way to connect with her kids.

“That was the hardest part for me. I wonder if my kids want me,” she says, choking back tears.

Stages of grief

Culbertson said in the aftermath of the second plane, he saw his students begin to move through a range of emotions. He remembers some students moving to the back of the room, where they began quietly weeping. Others were angry. Some showed no emotion at all.

“Some of the stages of grief that we talk about with any type of loss, I think a number of those were on display in the room that day,” he said.

For Schumacher and Stroyan, the grieving process unfolded at a slower rate. Their students weren't exposed to the events as they happened. The real work of unpacking their feelings about what had occurred began in the days after the attacks. Just like older kids, Schumacher said, little ones process their emotions in a variety of ways.

“You don’t know how kids manifest those feelings,” she said. Some were openly scared while others seemed to keep their emotions locked inside. Schumacher and Stroyan, who often collaborated, decided to help the kids process their feelings by focusing on the “helpers” — all the first responders who rushed into the burning towers to help, and all the people then hard at work keeping the country secure.

“Look at all the people that are helping people feel OK, and making sure that we’re safe,” they would tell their kids.

Stroyan remembers that students began to coalesce around feelings of unity and hope. Every year as part of the curriculum, Stroyan would have the class draw pictures of the Statue of Liberty. They would then add thought bubbles: Things they imagined the statue would say if she could talk. Stroyan said in the years prior to 9/11, students tended to write touristy blurbs. Lady Liberty would usually encourage people to come to the city for the shopping, or because they could get good hot dogs.

“You can even eat in the head of the statue!” one wrote.

A drawing by one of the students.
Courtesy
This was drawn by that little girl who'd come running down the hallway, warning her teachers that the country was at war.

But when Stroyan led students through the project in 2001, five weeks after the attack, the thoughts above the statue's head took a very different tone. Stroyan kept the drawings, one of which read:

I will protect you always

If you live in a state like Illinois

And I cannot see your city

It does not mean I am not with you

I am standing here giving the warm feeling

Of peace and Love

That statue was drawn by the little girl who'd come running down the hallway, warning her teachers that the country was at war.

Lasting regret

Culbertson also noticed a pervading sense of togetherness in the days and weeks after the attack. He remembers the feeling that the entire country was united, filtered into the classroom. In a very profound way, bearing witness to 9/11 brought Culbertson and his students together. But looking back, Culbertson wishes he'd handled that morning differently.

“One thing I regret, I think, very much — and I’ve thought about this multiple times since those days… I really regret having as much of that be live for our students as it was,” Culbertson said.

Culbertson has spent years asking himself if processing the events of 9/11 in real time was perhaps too much for those kids to bear. But though he has regrets about the experience, Culbertson wonders if it would even be possible today when we consume news of major events very differently than we did 20 years ago.

“Because when students experience these events that maybe rock their understanding to the core, it’s much more happening personally and privately,” he said.

We no longer gather around a single screen, watching events unfold together. Instead, the news is delivered through our own personal device, tailored to our individual taste, through our own customized feed.

Culbertson worries that despite all our connectivity, kids may now be experiencing tragedy alone.

Sarah Nardi is a WGLT reporter. She previously worked for the Chicago Reader covering Arts & Culture.
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